Posted on 12/25/2011 11:22:02 PM PST by neverdem
Studies track biochemical patterns from just after conception to old age
Human brains all work pretty much the same and use roughly the same genes in the same way to build and maintain the infrastructure that makes people who they are, two new studies show. And by charting the brain’s genetic activity from before birth to old age, the studies reveal that the brain continually remodels itself in predictable ways throughout life.
In addition to uncovering details of how the brain grows and ages, the results may help scientists better understand what goes awry in brain disorders such as schizophrenia and autism.
“The complexity is mind-numbing,” says neuroscientist Stephen Ginsberg of the Nathan Kline Institute and New York University Langone Medical Center, who wasn’t involved in the studies. “It puts the brain in rarefied air.”
In the studies, published in the Oct. 27 Nature, researchers focused not on DNA — virtually every cell’s raw genetic material is identical — but on when, where and for how long each gene is turned on over the course of a person’s life. To do this, the researchers measured levels of mRNA, a molecule whose appearance marks one of the first steps in executing the orders contained in a gene, in postmortem samples of donated brains that ranged in age from weeks after conception to old age.
These different patterns of mRNA levels distinguish the brain from a heart, for instance, and a human from a mouse, too, says Nenad Šestan of Yale University School of Medicine and coauthor of one of the studies. “Essentially, we carry the same genes as mice,” he says. “However, in us, these genes are up to something quite different.”
To see what those genes were up to, Šestan’s study examined mRNA levels of different genes in 57 brain...
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
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Now where did I put my car keys? lol
Actually you can do experiments.
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Your brain genes neglected to remind you to ping this thread yesterday. Or maybe that was the Christmas cheer. ;-)
I didn’t finish with the threads that I wanted to link. I like to link from a general health & science topic that I posted to a diabetes, stem cell or micro/immunology threads or other health & science threads.
That way no one accuses me of trying to hijack a thread as the links I make open in a new window and contribute to the other threads if I can help it.
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